The Minimum Viable Kitchen - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/cookware/ <comment><USER3> I cook quite a bit and have a lot of friends who own commercial kitchens.

\- Victorinox Fibrox knives are by far the best value you will get. They are inexpensive and are quite the workhorse.

\- I agree for the most part about the pots and pans except cast iron should be #1 on the list. The one thing you will learn very quickly as a cook is that cast iron is your friend. It also lasts forever.

\- Someone said something about ditching whisk. Are you freaking kidding me? A whisk costs under $5 and it is invaluable for lots of dishes.

\- Desserts are generally hard and require specialized gear. I'd drop the whole damn category.

\- I'd add a bamboo steamer to the list. You can pick one up at a asian grocery store. Put it over a large pan of water.

<comment><USER4> One caveat that people rarely discuss about Victorinox Fibrox knives is that the don't hold an edge very long. They're a great starter knife and a great long-term knife if you don't mind sharpening it fairly frequently.

For example, at the rate I cook, I had to buy three separate fibrox chef's knives to go a solid month without needing to resharpen. And then I'd need to resharpen all three. I decided to upgrade to a slightly more pricey knife that was made of a harder metal. I can now go between 6 and 9 months between sharpening that knife.

So if you do go for the victorinox knives, they will arrive super sharp. But be prepared to resharpen them frequently depending on how much you use them.

<comment><USER5> Do you steel _every time_ you use the knife? That seems to be what pro's do. Obviously there's a difference between "dull" and "out of true", and if the only problem is "easy to get out of true", well, that's not a big deal.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I use a smooth steel. These knives get truly dull. I sharpen them myself with wet stones and I've tried various angles on the blades. I have 5 victorinox chef's knives of various size. And two victorinox filet knives that I use for cutting fish and breaking down large cuts of meat. The filet knives last a long time because they very rarely touch the cutting board. But for the most part I use a MAC chef's knife.

In about 9 months time I will have dulled all 5 victorinox chef's knives and the one MAC knife I own. And the MAC gets more than half of the load during that time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Line by line, my disagreements:

\- You don't need cookbooks. The internet is better in terms of 'MVK', and the best cookbook is the one you make yourself.

\- Get rid of half of the pots and the dutch oven. Cast iron is indeed the greatest.

\- A stand mixer is nice, but by no means is it Minimum Viable.

\- If you insist on getting a mixing bowl that isn't a regular bowl, don't get three of them.

\- Ditch the whisk.

\- Saying an ice cream maker is part of an MVK is like saying cool t-shirts is part of a startup's MVP.

That being said, I really like this article.

<comment><USER5> * The Internet is full of terrible cooking information, and if you don't have any authoritative sources at all, it's hard to separate the good from the bad. You should have one trustworthy cookbook.

* You will be unhappy if your only cooking surface is cast iron. I agree that you can do without the dutch oven but it is the "pan you can do without" that is the most valuable; it is the immediate runner up to the the "list of must-have pans".

* Strong disagree on your mixing bowl point. You need lots of mixing bowls. I have 8 and wish I had more. For instance: muffins and pancakes both want two mixing bowls at a minimum, and three if you don't want to use a service bowl to separate eggs. Sautees want a mixing bowl for proteins and mixing bowl for prepped vegetables. Dinner prep usually wants one mixing bowl just to throw onion skins and wrappers in. Mixing bowls are lightweight, stackable, cheap, and supremely useful, and it makes no sense to chintz on them.

* I don't even know how to respond to "ditch the whisk" unless you're one of those old French guys who can make a hollandaise with a fork. You need a whisk.

<comment><USER7> _> The Internet is full of terrible cooking information, and if you don't have any authoritative sources at all, it's hard to separate the good from the bad._

The internet is full of terrible information in general. That's why PageRank was invented. Is there something unique about cooking information that means PageRank won't work with it?

<comment><USER5> YES. Recipes are a long-tail topic. The sites that do best in PageRank are the ones with the most recipes. The sites with the most recipes tend to either be overtly user-generated or slyly repackaged UGC. Moreover, as Patrick will explain, most people who search for prepared dishes aren't actually going to prepare them, which means Google has little incentive to ensure the tops of the SERPs are good.

I'll find the eHow "how to cook a steak" that was pegged to the top of a SERP in a bit.

Another counterexample to your belief about the miracle of PageRank: try searching for symptoms some time.

<comment><USER7> > YES. Recipes are a long-tail topic.

There are many (non-tech) long-tail topics that I've successfully searched for using Google, so I don't think this is a generalizable statement.

> The sites with the most recipes tend to either be overtly user-generated or > slyly repackaged UGC.

I can't speak as to the average user, but I am usually able to easily ignore/sift through such sites. They pop up frequently in all kinds of searches these days, and is one of the clearest signs of Google's results going downhill.

That said, I have no personal experience looking for recipes online, as my cooking knowledge was largely learned from my mom, and I've had no reason to turn to any other sources so far.

> Another counterexample to your belief about the miracle of PageRank: try > searching for symptoms some time.

When did I suggest that I believe that PageRank is miraculous? It has its pitfalls, just like any other algorithm.

And I've actually searched for symptoms several times and successfully self- diagnosed (confirmed later during a doctor's visit). So this example of yours doesn't hold up. My success there may have been swayed by my professional biomedical knowledge though.

<comment><USER5> I had a cold a few weeks back, and a coworker found me a search term that prominently featured cerebrospinal fluid leakage as a possible cause for runny nose. Just to establish how far apart you and I are on the usability of the Internet for this.

<comment><USER7> Oh, it's definitely possible to find all kinds of wacky and incorrect theories at the top of a SERP. Remember that PageRank depends on internet _users_ being (mostly) correct. And oftentimes users are not. Take any political topic as an example. But this is generally solvable by phrasing your query correctly.

But you can still sometimes see this problem with medical topics because heavy-handed government regulation has largely stifled innovation in the medical industry. New technology adoption in the industry is extremely slow, and from my own professional experience, I can tell you that getting doctors to do something as simple as type their notes (so they're available to patients online) instead of handwriting them is akin to pulling teeth.

The protectionism that has resulted from constant lobbying by the AMA has resulted in lots of doctors being able to avoid the adoption of new technology, so discussion of medical topics online by knowledgeable individuals is rarer than in other fields. Perhaps this will change as baby boomers age and medical costs skyrocket, but I'm definitely not holding my breath.

Also, there is of course the issue of most people searching for this stuff not being very knowledgeable, so it creates some confusion on the part of the searcher, what with all the new vocabulary. As for your cerebrospinal fluid example, it's very possible that I see those sorts of results, but I just tune them out due to how absurd they are.

Edit: you were probably talking about CSF rhinorrhea[0]. As it says:

> Most cases of CSF rhinorrhea occur after major accidents where the bones of > the face and skull experience significant trauma.

Ergo, if you haven't been in a major accident recently, disregard. Doesn't seem that complicated to me.

0: [http://uvahealth.com/services/skull-base- program/conditions-...](http://uvahealth.com/services/skull-base- program/conditions-treatments/csf-rhinorrhea)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One mans' MVK = another mans' WTF.

My MVK? A refrigerator, a knife, and a cutting board.

A little background...

90% of what we eat = raw produce. So it's pretty straightforward. We just eat produce at home and an occasional hot meal out. Every meal at home is either fresh fruit or a salad. (I haven't eaten anything other than fruit before noon for 25 years.) We have lots of nuts & seeds, cereals, snacks, and many wonderful things in our fridge.

We eat out at restaurants several times per week and zero in on our favorites. (Living in Miami, we'll probably run out of fantastic options in about 30 years.) Most of the places we go serve food far better than what we could or would want to prepare and most definitely satisfy our "foodie" desires. Miami also offers many foods we would have never even dreamed about.

This was a nice post for beginning foodies (Thank you, Matt), but these days, MV<anythings> asymphtotically approach zero. In most places, you really can eat lots of delicious and healthy food without all that stuff.

(By the way, anyone need a stove, range, or microwave with 0 miles on them?)

<comment><USER5> If you're eating out most nights except for the ones where you eat salad, you don't have a viable kitchen.

<comment><USER8> Sure I do. You don't need to cook food.

We eat better than most people I know who do cook. Come on over the next time you're in Miami and we'll show you. :-)

<comment><USER5> If that's your perspective, why even have a kitchen? You can put a fridge in any room. Replace one of your countertops with a stationary bicycle and add a power rack; call it an "eat-in gym".

It's all love with this comment, you know. Come to Chicago sometime and we'll make you ceviche.

<comment><USER9> Ceviche doesn't require much more than a fridge and a knife too ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is horribly titled (not the HN one, the article's actual title). The full quote from the article (Minimum Viable Kitchen (MVK) for creating gourmet food) would have been better.

The thesis statement is also helpful to understand what he is trying to achieve:

      I define the Minimum Viable Kitchen as one that can
      allow you to create over 75% of the recipes that are
      in what I consider to be the best cookbooks for
      home chefs.

<comment><USER11> I get that, but also i'm going to echo the points of the other folks up here that MV is totally an "eye of the beholder" metric.

For cooking most western foods, for example, i think he totally misses the mark in the pots/pans section. Having worked in a 'new american' kitchen, i can confidently say that buying cheap aluminum/stainless 8", 10" sautee pans, an 8" nonstick, a 1pt saucepan, a 2qt pot, (~$9 ea at fsw or whatever) and a cheap $30 dutch oven covers the vast majority of of cooking needs if you throw in a few pieces of steel wool and let the sheet tray pass for whatever baking.

the notion that heavy pans for 'even heat distribution' are essential is true at some echelon of gourmet cuisine, but getting to know how your pan behaves on your stove is _infinitely_ more valuable and cost effective than buying a set of all-clads. case in point, buy a cast-iron fry pan and discover its 'even heat' characteristic still includes a hotspot right under the burner.

75% of all recipes don't require all that much, though, it's the 25% that add much of the weird equipment overhead (i'm looking at you, spring form pan!)

<comment><USER12> Actually, my cast iron pan has a donut shaped hot spot, with a cold spot in the middle.

My 12" allclad fry on the other hand, not so donut shaped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The only part he got right imo is the one most people get wrong; knives. Lots of my friends have tons of them, I have 3, a good chefs knife and a good flexible knife for boning and filleting and then a throwaway paring knife (ie it is so cheap that if I feel like it's not sharpening up well after a few months I throw it away). Lots of other stuff I've never had... I mean an ice cream making as minimum? And a stand mixer? Elbow grease costs nothing, as someone probably rightly once said.

The takeaway possibly is that minimum viable anything is relative to the expectations of the observer. Also that over-thinking things can lead to excess.

<comment><USER14> This.

You'd be surprised at the crap knives people buy. Not only do cheap knives dull quickly, they also are composed of multiple pieces. Dull knives lead to scarring injuries (whereas sharp knives lead to a clean cut that most likely won't scar) and knives that have multiple pieces will be harder to clean and therefore contain more bacteria.

If anyone needs a recommendation, I swear by Global [1] knives. They are sharp as...well, anything I've ever seen. They also stay sharp for a long time. Yes, they will cost you a lot of money (but they're usually on sale somewhere out there) but over the long term you are saving money by not having to buy so many knives.

I respectfully disagree with having a throw-away knife because a knife is a sharp cutting instrument that is supposed to be an extension of your arm/hand. If you are always purchasing new knives, you are changing the feel of the knife and you will change how you unconsciously use it (also known as muscle memory). Especially with a paring knife, use the same one because the 'paring' action usually involves you cutting towards your wrist and you want to make sure that you don't accidentally suicide yourself.

My goto knives are:

\- G-4: Oriental cook's knife (<http://www.global- knife.com/products/g/product_g-4.html>)

\- GSF-49: utility knife [I use it as a paring knife] (<http://www.global- knife.com/products/gs/product_gsf-49.html>)

One other key piece of advice for knives: cutting boards. NEVER NEVER NEVER use glass cutting boards. Tempered glass is very strong and you are just damaging the blade by cutting on it. Use wood (and clean it well) or, at the very least, plastic.

[1] <http://www.global-knife.com/>

<comment><USER15> I use Global Pros (and have ~20 of them), but I'd recommend the $20 Victorinox chef's knife ([http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Swiss-8-Inch-Fibrox- Straigh...](http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Swiss-8-Inch-Fibrox- Straight/dp/B008M5U1C2) \-- get the 8 or 10 inch), and a smaller knife (like the matching one). I have some $4 Cold Steel VG-10 serrated knives which I love, since they're super super tough, too (I use them for opening coconuts, etc.

Also, get a great pair of shears (which come apart for cleaning), such as <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002IMMEW>

<comment><USER16> You know I almost recommended the 10" Global chef's knife because I know a ton of professional chefs use them, but it was a budget exercise and I think most home chefs can just sharpen the Fibrox every couple months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On blenders, I've _never_ had luck with a < $100 blender and my vitamix would be on my short list of _"If you were stuck on an island with 1 kitchen electric ..."_

I cook a lot (for a family of 5) and my minimum/essential kitchen items for us are:

\- 2 knives (I use Global but I like Victorinox too) + Henckels sharpener

\- Cast iron skillet

\- Wok

\- Small non-stick pan (my wife prefers little/no oils)

\- 2 Pots

\- 1 steamer basket

\- 1 baking sheet

\- 1 pizza stone (or some unglazed tiles from Home Depot)

\- KitchenAid stand mixer

\- Vitamix 5200 blender

\- 1 large Rubbermaid tub/lid for rising bread dough

\- 1 slow cooker / crock pot (you can get em for as little as $20)

As for books, I've collected a few here and there but the ones I refer to the most are The Professional Chef (referenced in article), The Magnolia Bakery cookbooks, and Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (amazing bread a pizza dough for busy people).

[http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes- Revolutioni...](http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes- Revolutionizes/dp/0312362919/ref=sr_1_1)

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Magnolia-Bakery-Cookbook-Old- Fashi...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Magnolia-Bakery-Cookbook-Old- Fashioned/dp/0684859106/ref=sr_1_1)

[http://www.amazon.com/Zwilling-J-A-Henckels-Sharp- Sharpener/...](http://www.amazon.com/Zwilling-J-A-Henckels-Sharp- Sharpener/dp/B00006CJLM)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for these great suggestions.

What do you think about slow cookers destroying vital nutrients? This is the only thing keeping me from buying one.

I read some more serious research a while back but a quick search on Google got these 2 (not so great) sources:

[http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=45](http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=45) [http://www.livestrong.com/article/129000-slow-cookers- nutrit...](http://www.livestrong.com/article/129000-slow-cookers-nutrition/)

<comment><USER17> It's an interesting topic and I honestly haven't done much research on it.

I really only cook 2 things in our slow cooker: (1) meats in some sort of sauce (usually chicken or pork) which we use with chopped/raw veggies for tacos or salads and (2) steel cut oatmeal (we set it on low the night before with diced apples + cinnamon).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel like there is lots missing from this list that a really functional kitchen needs.

Supplies I'd add to a MVK:

Dry measuring cups/spoons, liquid measures, rubber jar opener, bottle opener, plastic wrap, aluminum foil, digital timer, oven mitts, soap (I also like Lysol wipes for quick sanitizing)

Ingredients to keep in stock:

Fridge: butter (salted for cooking, unsalted for baking), lemon, lime, whole milk or cream, eggs, soy, Worcestershire

Pantry: cooking wine, vinegar, olive and vegetable oils, salt, black pepper (peppercorns in grinder preferably), dried spices (oregano, basil, parsley, cilantro, mint, chive, dill, cumin, coriander, chili powder, red pepper, garlic powder, dried onion, or at the very least some "cheater" mixes like Adobo, Jane's Krazy, Old Bay), vanilla, nuts and nut butters, shortening

Dry ingredients: white flour, white sugar (brown optional), baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, chocolate, breadcrumbs (or make them)

Also keep around: fresh garlic, onions, quick starches (rice, couscous, pasta, potato), bread, liquid stocks (really you can make these), cheeses, other alcohols

I think you can probably get everything on my list for less than the price of the ice cream maker.

<comment><USER20> This.

People focus a lot of the equipment, but a properly stocked pantry will get you further.

Find a canned "quick" item that is super luxurious. Keep it always stocked. It makes the simple life awesome. Mine are "elysee gherkins". Eat a sandwich? Add gherkins. Any kind of appetizer? put a small bowl of gherkins out.

<comment><USER19> Sweet, I am totally going to buy elysee gherkins the next time I see them.

My secret luxurious dessert ingredient is speculoos. I saw it on Chopped so now I have to pick it up every time I'm at Trader Joe's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's a lot closer to a dream kitchen than an "minimum viable".

<comment> jon-wood Agreed, I'd say I have half the items on that list at the most, and still manage to make good food most nights (admittedly my last soup came out like baby food).

And since it seems somewhat on topic, Hubbub are hiring developers, so if you love both food and technology we'd love to hear from you: <http://developers.hubbub.co.uk/>.

We provide an online delivery service for local independent food shops, because we love food too much to leave it to the supermarkets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Definitely should have put "for gourmet cooking" or something to that effect in the title, as that was the intended purpose. Half the comments here are "you can cook with less than that" with which I agree. You just can't cook a high percentage of the stuff in a cookbook written by a guy with Michelin stars.

</comment><comment><USER22> Title should read "The Minimum Viable Kitchen for heavy consumers"

Go and live in a developing country for a few years, see and taste the phenomenal food, then double check if you need to spend a fraction of $971

<comment><USER23> To be fair to the author, he's talking capital K kitchen. Like, you take food as a serious hobby and want to have a reasonable chance of recreating dishes from Top Chef or in culinary magazines. I don't think he's trying to make a "Minimum Viable Food Preperation System".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I first moved across the country and needed to build up my kitchen supplies from scratch I was quite lost. I think I generally followed this nytimes article and was very happy with the results: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09mini.html?pagewan...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09mini.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

The nytimes author seems less fussy about things and imho has a better list for people who need a basic version of most often needed kitchen items.

This priceonomics article is pretty good. I definitely agree with the Victorinox suggestion and only buying a chef's knife and paring knife upfront. I think getting an ice cream maker is kind of ridiculous. I do think it's good to have a few basic cookbooks handy (finding good recipes on the internet is definitely an acquired skill).

One very helpful thing I haven't seen mentioned is to check out restaurant supply stores. They generally charge way less than most retail places, while their presentation isn't always as pretty they work fine (obviously, since they're used in restaurants). The only issue I've had is that the size of things necessary for a restaurant can be too big for my home use.

<comment><USER25> I second the advice by Mark Bittman, the "minimalist". A small kitchen does not need a stand mixer (though a food processor is useful to make Indian food, among other things), and certainly not an ice-cream maker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like that the article is attempting to encourage people to cook more, but the premise is flawed. You don't take someone who's interested in food and tell them to read the French Laundry Cookbook. You tell them to start with Julia Child, or the Joy of Cooking, or Cooks Illustrated, or Mark Bittman. Crawl, then walk, then run.

Similarly, you don't tell a novice to spend $1000 on equipment they might never use. I've cooked "gourmet" for over a decade and I've never owned a stand mixer. You tell them to buy a good chef's knife, a good paring knife. A stock pot, a frying pan, maybe a saucepan. I have a cast iron pan but i use my nonstick pans much more often.

The difficulty in learning to cook is not in getting the right tools. It's in getting someone to overcome their fear of it. You just need to show them that it's actually not a difficult thing, that you can screw up a recipe multiple times and still have a delicious result. Make a pot of spaghetti, then a simple soup or stew, roast a chicken, fry a steak. Then go nuts making Keller's Oysters and Pearls. But only after.

The people who would find use out of many of the items listed are the same people who know what they need, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's my recommendation for a knife sharpener, the Lansky system: <http://amzn.com/B000B8L6LI>

Buy that, plus the "Ultra Fine" stone: <http://amzn.com/B000B8L6MC>

The Lansky system has metal guides that maintain the right honing angle for you, so you can easily get a decent edge by just following the directions in their video. So long as you treat your knives right, you should just have to do that twice a year. (No dishwasher, and don't let them bash against silverware in the drying rack and in the drawer.)

As for a knife, get something with a real high carbon steel blade. Most stainless is too soft and loses its edge.

Chicago Cutlery used to be good, but I see now they've cheaped-out on their design. (If you have the good fortune to find an older Walnut Traditions knife, make a "boat" with aluminum foil and soak the handles in mineral oil, then don't wash them so much. Oil soaked wood doesn't need too much washing.)

This one looks promising: <http://amzn.com/B0000CFDD5>

<comment><USER28> Seconded, I have that Lansky set and it's the best sharpening system I've used, and very fast and accurate, whether you're grinding a blade to a new angle or touching up an existing edge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Notes:

* Strong recommend on the Fibrox knife. If you don't already have a serious knife, don't buy one; get the Fibrox and use it for awhile. You may never want another knife, and if you ever do, you'll have a very good idea what you're looking for. Beware of knives: they're Veblen goods.

* Don't get the expensive butcher block board. Actively avoid it. If you feel like arguing about this, you're not the reader this note targets; everyone else, trust me that the butcher block board is a lot of maintenance for not a lot of practical difference. Plastic and laminate boards work great, are cheap, and you can throw them in the dishwasher.

* Get two boards of different colors and designate one for meat. This minimizes accidental cross-contamination and also makes it easier to handle multiple prep steps since a board that was used for carrots and onions can just be rinsed off to reuse for shallots or garlic.

* I'd recommend against the knife sharpener. It's hard and a little time consuming to do a good job sharpening knives, and if you're not ready to commit to learning how, you're better off bringing your knives in every month or so; it takes just 2 minutes for a shop to do it. You probably won't sharpen your own knives even if you buy the equipment, but having it, you'll convince yourself you don't need to have your knives sharpened professionally. Bad sharpeners can also mess up your knives.

* Strong disagree on "just get 10 piece set" of pots/pans. You need a large sautee, a saucier (which will double as rice and veg cooking), a soup pot, and a _small_ nonstick omelette pan, and nothing else. Except for the omelette pan, which you'll be replacing every year or so, the quality of your pans will matter a lot. I like All-Clad, like everyone else.

* If you want to optimize a little, get a Lodge Enamelled Dutch Oven and use it for soup and also braises.

* Get the cheapest All-Clad on offer. All-Clad's multiple lines are mostly about price discrimination.

* Unless you eat smoothies, most people will use their Kitchenaid Mixer more than they'll use any blender. You can safely skip the blender! People geek out on blenders, and, what's more tricky, venders _aren't_ Veblen goods; their performance really does scale with their price. Which means you'll easily be convinced to drop a lot of money on a blender. If you're unsure whether you want to allocate a lot of dollars to a Vitamix (we love ours, but...), get an immersion ("stick") blender instead. They're very cheap and they'll do most of the culinary things you'd do with the stand blender.

* Again regarding mixers: there is only one brand. You want a Kitchenaid.

* If you're not going to bake, you can skip the mixer.

* If you get a stick blender, you can get one with attachments and skip the hand mixer.

* Nerds need slow cookers. Here again I disagree with Matt. Normal people can get away with not having a crock pot, but if you're looking to set up a kitchen that will get you cooking more and eating In-N-Out less, you need the crock pot. They're cheap, and more importantly, they allow you to queue up a meal in the morning and come home to it done.

* Hard to disagree with Matt on the utilities. You need a scale. You need a stack of light metal mixing bowls (do not waste time and money on heavy mixing bowls). Microplanes are great. You want a box grater. You want a thermometer. If you're making room in your budget for optimization: the Thermapen is _totally_ worth it. Nobody I know who has one fails to wax poetical about them. I rarely use the rolling pin. I disagree about the silicone tongs; get all-metal ones, but get a good pair. Matt didn't say "fish spatula" but trust me on this, you'll use it _all the time_. If you didn't know you needed a good whisk I don't know how I can help you.

Finally:

One thing Matt didn't list here that has more or less changed my life: go to Amazon and get the largest bulk plastic deli cup box they'll sell you. Deli cups are amazing. You need deli cups. I don't mean "you need 1 or 2 deli cups". I mean you need a stack of 60 somewhere in your kitchen, and another 300 or so in a closet.

Stab at a true minimum viable kitchen (there are other minimal configurations):

\- Cuisinart 3qt sautee ($52)

\- Large pot ($25, Cuisinart)

\- Small cheap nonstick omelette pan ($20, Cuisinart)

\- Fibrox chef's knife ($26)

\- Metal fish spatula ($12, OXO)

\- 2 plastic cutting boards ($30 for 2, generic)

\- 2 light metal mixing bowls ($20 for 2, generic)

\- 1 4-cup pyrex measuring cup ($10)

\- Balloon whisk ($10, OXO)

\- Large wooden spoon ($5, Calphalon)

\- Large slotted spoon ($10, OXO)

\- Tbsp/tsp measuring spoon ($3, generic)

\- Stick blender ($45, Cuisinart, w/ whisk)

\- Pepper grinder ($10, generic)

\- Thermometer ($20, generic)

\- Scale ($20, generic)

Total: $305

<comment><USER16> I left out consumables, but yeah on deli cups.

Couple minor rebuttals:

* The sharpener I recommended takes seconds to use and can't really be messed up. Cook's Illustrated says it works as well as an electric one that is much more difficult and more time consuming. I can sharpen my knife with it in less time than you can even safely package yours to take to get sharpened, and the Fibrox needs to be sharpened somewhat often. Seriously, buy that sharpener and try it. I'll give you the $9 back if you don't like.

* I don't think a 10 piece set costs more than the individual pieces you described typically. They count lids at pieces, so it's really more like a 6 piece set. I frequently need multiple saucepans or skillets when cooking so I really don't think it's overkill. (I'd recommend one saute and one skillet at minimum). You need a small saucepan and a large. I would agree that the first thing I'd spend extra on would be All-Clad pans. Most restaurants, even good ones, use cheapo aluminum pans though, so I don't think I'd call it minimum viable. (I probably should have recommended cheap aluminum pans from a restaurant supply store honestly.)

* I'd pick the blender over the stand mixer any day, and I almost never make beverages with it. It makes awesome soups. Aerates a quiche. Makes homemade mayo. Purees fruit for sorbets or granitas so well you don't even have to strain out the seed chunks. I don't think I'd do any of those with an immersion blender.

<comment><USER5> I have so much better luck with the stick blender for mayo and hollandaise that I actively avoid the standing blender for fat-based sauces. Ultimately, if you're not going to bake much and you're not going to make beverages a lot with it, I say ditch both the mixer and the blender and get a decent stick blender instead.

A large straight-sided sautee does double duty as a skillet.

Interesting how neither of us think the food processor is a vital purchase. Especially because I use mine all the time, but, yeah, not in my "MVK".

PS to everyone else: if you don't make mayo, you should try; it's extremely easy and very very good. 1 egg yolk, salt, tbsp of tart liquid, maybe some dijon. Mix, then slowly pour 1 cup oil while running blender. Done. Got some sriracha? Mix in after you get the emulsion going. Amazing.

<comment><USER16> And use grapeseed oil! Expensive but amazing.

I use my food processor occasionally. Pie crusts, etc. But most stuff I'd rather do in a Vitamix.

I guess maybe I love my blender so much because I love soups and sorbets. And quiche. I use it probably at least twice weekly. And going through that cook book, there are a lot of things that call for it.

<comment><USER5> And holy shit we both forgot fish sauce. You can't call your kitchen viable without fish sauce!

<comment><USER29> Any specific recommendations there?

<comment><USER5> Vietnamese. It isn't expensive. Put it in _everything_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Before you run out and spend money on pans, do yourself a favor and spend some time with an induction cooktop. You can get a single element hob for less than $100 that's reasonably portable, easy to store and useable on a counter top. You'll want a large element, but even a 4 inch one is an eye opening introduction to this amazing cooking technology. I've always cooked over flame (and still consider red glowing coals superior to anything), but induction is a game changer. After a year of using the hob, I replaced my gas range with induction and haven't looked back. Unfortunately, that meant half my pans went into storage, being aluminum or nonmagnetic stainless steel. Many cheap pans work well with induction, including cast iron, but a well made induction-ready pan is a thing of beauty.

Also +1 on parchment paper and Silpats. Your baking sheets and pans will last forever.

<comment><USER5> Induction burners are awesome and extremely cheap. They're not strictly cost effective to operate in the US (we have unreasonably low gas prices) but are pretty much everywhere else. The coolest thing about them is that they're completely portable; they're lightweight and they generate very little ambient heat. You could bring one to your office to make omelettes, if not for the cleanup problem afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the post is great, but he made an assumption that wasn't stated and might cause all of us to disagree.

He picked a cuisine without saying which one.

A MVK will have different sets of equipment depending on the cuisine you choose. A Chinese kitchen will have a wok and a rice cooker, while a French kitchen will have things that you need to make bread.

The most important thing is to choose a cuisine and stick to it! There is a lot of learn from one cuisine before you move to another.

In my experience (being Chinese and born in North America), my kitchen holds a lot of stuff that i like (black bean sauce and grainy mustard) that just don't work together, but i wouldn't want to live without. (Also wok spatula and tongs if you are looking for an equipment example)

<comment><USER5> American kitchens should probably skip the wok even if they're making Chinese food, because woks are designed for a specific kind of cooktop and are outperformed by large sautee pans otherwise.

<comment><USER31> I have been told this, and therefore never owned a wok, but I'm now thinking of getting a wok anyway because Kenji (aka "J. Kenji Lopez-Alt" of SeriousEats.com) disagrees, and "follow Kenji around like a zombie and taste what he tastes" is a motto that is serving me well in life so far.

Here's Kenji's non-scientific rant on the subject:

[http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/06/wok-skills-101-stir- fryin...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/06/wok-skills-101-stir-frying- basics.html?ref=search)

Here's the better-equipped-with-charty-graphy-goodness version:

[http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/06/the-food-lab-for-the- best...](http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/06/the-food-lab-for-the-best-stir- fry-fire-up-the-grill.html?ref=search)

<comment><USER5> I am totally getting that Weber grill/wok setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I disagree. We cook _anything_ for a family of 5 with virtually nothing. Two stainless pans, a roasting tray, frying pan, 2 knives, 2x wooden spoon, metal strainer spoon, peeler, a whisk, a pyrex jug and a couple of forks.

Probably cost us < $100 as most of it was free. Same with our bone china crockery + cutlery (both were $20).

Less to wash up as well and we haven't cooked any ready meals for 10 years - we only cook from basic ingredients.

Recipe books - we own _one_ and it's the Mary Berry baking bible because it's so easy to fuck up when baking and she does 100% bullet proof recipes.

<comment><USER33> That's similar to my kitchen as well.

These days I do have a lot of random appliances, mostly from loyalty rewards. They're handy, but the only one I regularly use is my electric mixer. No need to a stand mixer!

<comment><USER32> We purge appliances regularly. Seem to collect microwaves and bread makers from relatives who think we are poor and need them.

We make bread by hand (only takes ten mins) and everything that comes out of a microwave tastes like shit.

<comment><USER19> How do you make bread in 10 minutes?

<comment><USER32> Flatbreads in frying pan.

Actual bread takes 10 minutes of attention and about 2 hours of wall time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Mark Bittman wrote a nice column about outfitting a "no-frills kitchen" over at the NYT. I came across it via a review of knives over at the wirecutter. I can recommend both.

NYT article: <[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09mini.html?_r=1...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09mini.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all>);

The Wirecutter review: <[http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/a-great-chefs- knife/>](http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/a-great-chefs-knife/>);

<comment><USER35> I love that Bittman article! I think it's much closer to the idea of a 'minimum viable kitchen' for someone whose just starting cooking than this article. And it has the much more approachable cost of "under $300," as opposed to the OP's "under $1000."

<comment><USER36> Different goals! The OP's aim is a "Minimum Viable Kitchen (MVK) for creating gourmet food".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fundamental rule I have is "don't buy sets -- buy individual items as you find uses for them". I bought a lot of really expensive stuff on eBay (Staub, Demeyere) and in Japan (Global Pro knives), and I actually only use a few of each.

A cast iron enameled wok, though, is awesome. I got mine from the Wok Shop in SF for $30 with spatula/etc.

[http://refer.ly/cooking_tools/c/59d5b57c118b11e2a4ec22000a1d...](http://refer.ly/cooking_tools/c/59d5b57c118b11e2a4ec22000a1d0d51) is what I came up with a while ago.

<comment><USER16> I mostly agree. I just recommended the pots and pans set because they're cheap that way, and you really will use everything you find in a 10 piece set (which, btw, usually counts at least 3 lids as pieces). Knives on the other hand... I got a set as a gift long ago and have at least 5 I've not touched.

<comment><USER15> The main benefit for me in having two knife blocks of knives is being a able to do meat vs. veg prep with different instances of the same model knives and not wash anything until it is done, but now my kitchen is too small to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My Minimum Viable Kitchen would forget about half that stuff and add a Rice Cooker and broiler pan.

I have more kitchen equipment than I know what to do with, but 95% of the meals I wind up cooking need at most these:

\- Bamboo Cutting Board

\- Plastic cutting board

\- Tongs, spatulas, and cooking chopsticks

\- Rice cooker

\- Chef's knife

\- Paring Knife

\- Sashimi knife

\- Nakiri

\- Aluminum nonstick pan

\- cast-iron griddle / broiler pan

\- Pot with steamer

\- Saucepan

\- 12 Qt. Stock pot

\- Large Wok

\- Mixing bowls

\- Whisks

\- Hand mixer

This is enough equipment to cook a broad range of French, Japanese and American dishes. It's nice to have things like a Mandoline, oil thermometer or blender, but I find myself using them less frequently as I become more experienced. I've also never owned a tabletop mixer and never wished for one.

<comment><USER5> If you have a nakiri _and_ a sashimi knife, why would you want a chef's knife?

<comment><USER37> Chef's knives are excellent for cutting all sorts of things that don't require an extremely sharp edge, but they're just not good for cutting paper thin slices of very hard ingredients like lotus root, and my personal experience with using a chef's knife to slice tuna belly was not so great. By the same token, I would not dare use either a nakiri or yanagi blade on a chicken carcass or to fillet a whole fish, because you risk damaging the extremely sharp blade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The Victorinox Fibrox that he recommends is indeed a great knife for general cooking. I have a lower-middle range gyuto but I usually use the Fibrox because it's easier to take care of. While I cook mostly vegetables, a friend of mine who is a much more talented cook uses the Fibrox for everything.

In terms of pots and pans, I recommend getting a carbon steel wok. A carbon steel wok requires a bit of TLC but pays off in terms of delicious quick meals and the ability to use much less oil. Unfortunately when most people use a wok (often stainless or non-stick) they never actually stir fry but only end up sauteing or braising/steaming the food in its own juices. A zucchini and onion stir fry should only take about 4 or 5 minutes to stir fry, if even that. A wok is great for meals for two -- for larger meals you will have to cook in batches, if what is being made in the wok is the main course.

A good book for learning how to use a wok is "Wok Fast," which teaches you the techniques behind the wok, gives you a variety of sauces, and a bunch of recipes. By learning why a certain thing is done (such as why you should steam broccoli a bit before stir frying) instead of just following recipes, you can be more creative when cooking. The book is out of print but Amazon lists some other sellers.

Just be aware that most carbon steel woks come with a protective coating that must first be removed prior to seasoning and using it; find some instructions online or else you will end up with strange translucent stuff in your food. :) The coating has to come off as it is the interaction of oils with the carbon steel that cause a wok to develop its non-stick patina.

<comment><USER39> What would you use to get the Wok Hot enough for Stir-Fry. My biggest hindrance to using a Wok is the lack of a proper burner. I imagine there are lots of people in my situation.

<comment><USER38> Well, even when I was in a cheapo apartment with a rather poor electric stove I was able to stir fry as long as I paid attention to how much I cooked at once. Wok Fast teaches a technique that works pretty well for cooking meat + vegetable dishes. I'm writing this from memory, so it might be off by a bit, but the key is to cook at the most two cups of ingredients at a time.

1\. Wait until the wok surface is hot enough to vaporize a sprinkling of water instantly.

2\. Add the oil + onions and/or garlic and stir fry for 30 seconds. Coat the wok with the oil as you do this.

3\. Add the meat, let it sit on the wok until it is seared (at which point it will "unstick" from the wok) and stir fry about two minutes. Remove the meat, which is not yet fully cooked, and set it aside.

4\. Wait for the wok to heat up again, but be careful about using the water droplet technique as that can cause the oil to splash. Add the vegetables and stir fry until they brighten, about two minutes.

5\. If the wok is still pretty hot at this point you can just add the meat and cook another two minutes, then add the sauce and cook a final two minutes. If it seems like it isn't hot enough, remove the vegetables and let it heat up a bit before adding everything.

It's definitely more effort than just being able to add the meat, stir fry, then add the vegetables, but it does work, and only takes 8-10 minutes for meat + vegetables. If you are cooking only vegetables, the water doesn't need to instantly vaporize -- it should sit for about 2 or 3 seconds before vaporizing.

As I said, I'm recalling this from memory and I don't generally cook meat, so the instructions might be off (please don't eat undercooked meat!) But what I wanted to convey was that I found it possible to stir fry for two even with a low end electric stove. Maybe there are some stoves even worse than what I had, though! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If you were to get only one cookbook ever, the best bang for your buck and the one that gets the most use at my house is the Joy of Cooking. It's $22 and has thousands of recipes from salad dressings to pot pies to all that fancy- shmancy stuff.

[http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Cooking-75th- Anniversary-2006/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Cooking-75th- Anniversary-2006/dp/0743246268)

<comment><USER41> I would definitely recommend the Joy of Cooking, it's truly a cookbook and not just a compilation of recipes, going into theory and whys and hows, something you can really learn from and not just follow route directions, but I would try to make an effort to find a copy of the 1975 edition (something published before 1997!)

In the 90s, they totally changed JoC, removing whole sections and modifying a bunch of the recipes to be "healthier" (read low-fat). I much prefer having the original recipes and then be able to choose my own substitutions if I want to modify them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are a few cases on there where they mention something as the undisputed best in the high end, but you should get the cheaper thing, and they got the cheaper thing right 100% of the time, but either neglected another top option (which may be better in many ways), or actually didn't pick the top option. e.g. Demeyere is objectively better than All-Clad in every way except advertising spending. Shun Ken Onion is only mid-range for knives (but very good); MAC, Global, and a variety of both cheaper and more expensive Japanese options are better for Japanese, and there's a style argument for Japanese (sharper, harder) vs. European (tougher). Staub > Le Creuset, although the lodge or tramontina is 95% as good for 20% of the cost, and unglazed cast iron from lodge (or old stuff from Griswold, etc.) is just fine for $20-30 (but unglazed cast iron is fundamentally different from glazed).

<comment><USER16> I don't know where you get these opinions from, but I know it isn't Cook's Illustrated. And I don't know anywhere else to get well-tested opinions.

<comment><USER15> I find chow.com to be more accurate than CI.

Vitamix and Blend-Tec are both on par; I'd take either. (slight preference for vitamix, maybe?) I've never owned either, although I've used a vitamix at a military hospital; it was nice.

Demeyere is unquestionably better than All-Clad. It just has no distribution in the US (at least not until recently). All-Clad outspends everyone in sponsorships and marketing. "All-Clad is like Starbucks" comes up often.

Staub vs. Le Creuset has come up a bunch. Staub is certainly more durable (interior glaze, color change). Le Creuset has more colors outside, and more range. I have both (and Lodge), and agree about Staub > Le Creuset generally. Also, the stoneware crap from Le Creuset = hate. I hate it when premium brands come up with lower end stuff which is hard to distinguish. The worst is probably Kitchen-Aid; they had a bunch of Wal-Mart stand mixers which were visually indistinguishable and sucked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've got a copy of Myhrvold's "Modernist Cuisine"

[http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science- Cooking/...](http://www.amazon.com/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science- Cooking/dp/0982761007)

...which helped me learn about the MAXIMUM viable kitchen. It has a $10,000 lab-grade centrifuge, among other things.

<comment><USER43> It drives me nuts that someone I hate created a book that I would very much like to read. I wish there were a way to buy this without supporting the king of patent trolls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> There are some thing I would definitely do different that would either save me money on my MVK or allow me to choose to buy better quality items.

Things I could do without (I just don't bake much): -stand mixer -ice cream maker -rolling pin -cooling rack

Some things I would spend a little more on: -knives -thermometer

Additions: -can opener

</comment><comment><USER45> This is certainly not a "minimum viable kitchen" by any stretch, but it is a reasonable list of equipment necessary to make a certain type of recipe (from- scratch French-inspired New American cooking that involves baked components).

Personally, the single piece of equipment that I would recommend to the home chef* would be a good pressure cooker. Vegetables, stews, beans, and grains cook better and much, much faster, and the stocks you can make in a pressure cooker will blow away stovetop stocks.

*: I would consider a home chef to be someone who wants to spend time cooking. I know many people who don't and I don't grudge them that -- but for me, cooking is a true hobby (as in, something where I negatively value my own time -- the longer it takes, the more satisfaction I derive from it).

</comment><comment><USER46> I agree with most of the article. I do think he missed a few items through.

#1 is a cast iron skillet as others have mentioned. It's the third most used pan in my kitchen.

#2 and #2 most used is an omelet pan. Use it not just for omelets but for any kind of eggs. Also rocks at grilled cheese. Here you do want to go non-stick.

#3 is a set of measuring cups and measuring spoons. My advise is skip the plastic and get stainless. Plastic ones seems to break after a few years, especially if you run them through the dishwasher. You will also want a separate set of measuring cups for liquids if you get serious about cooking. OXO makes a nice set of three clear liquid measuring cups with graduations that you can read from above. Indispensable IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER47> Ikea sells surprisingly good butcher blocks for $25: <http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40082918/>

I assume they use odds and ends from their furniture manufacturing.

</comment><comment><USER48> Good list and good read but _nowhere_ close to MVK.

$25 for a cutting board? A $40 digital scale is overkill.

True MVP/MVK should be using stuff that's truly necessary. ie: A knife honer - just use the bottom of a ceramic bowl - worked for chefs for millennium.

<comment><USER49> If you read the thesis statement in the article, it's a minimum kitchen for cooking from books like Keller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Regarding pots and pans, I'm curious how these things hold up over time. Is a high-quality 15 year old pan (appearances aside) function as well as it did when it was new?

The reason I ask is because I see what I assume to be quality SS cookware at restaurant auctions all the time and they usually go for a fraction of what they're worth new. When I wanted to get a huge kettle (compared to my 20 quart canning pot) for brewing, I was able to get a 10-gallon SS pot for $30 at one an auction. For boiling water, it works perfectly. I'm just not sure about more delicate applications of heat and food.

<comment><USER12> If it's something like all-clad, aluminum bonded to stainless, then it should hold up forever unless it's been overheated to the point of melting.

I've got some that are going on 10 years, and they're essentially new, except for baked on oils on the (outside) bottom.

Cheaper stuff tends to show wear more, anodized aluminum exteriors wear through, nonstick fades after a few years, thin stainless dents.

I like restaurant supply stuff, I'd go there more often if I was closer to a store. I'd generally have no problem with used stainless stuff from a restaurant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I don't think he's going to turn many people to his side with broad generalizations, then a ton of purchases and equipment. Maybe just come up with a purpose - cook a date a meal, or cook a family a holiday spread - <USER2> a simple plan and maybe one piece of oddball advanced equipment. Enough purpose+tutorial articles -> he might manage to justify that kitchen army.

Even then adherents will spend a lot more time cooking and on food than those of us who can just buy a grocery bag of bread and milk and fruit every day or two and live without cooking, or who have other cut down hacks.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'd go for a food processor (~$100) over a stand mixer, but I don't make a lot of deserts. For making bread and pizza dough, I got a cheap bread maker for $50, and it was well-spent. The food processor comes in handy quite often; I'd hate to make bread crumbs, sliced or shredded vegetables, fresh salsa and a bunch of other things without one. Also, for those who are (like me) too lazy to keep their steel knives in proper working sharpness at all times, a ceramic knife is pretty handy for preparing veggies.

</comment><comment><USER53> $971? Are you fucking kidding me? It took me less than $200 to outfit my kitchen, and that includes a breadmaker, a rice-cooker, as well as things to eat the food with. Most of this was scavenged from estate sales and thrift shops.

This MVK post goes completely against the whole "minimal viable" spirit, which _should_ be self-explanatory: only what you need. This kitchen getup is certainly viable, but it's anything but minimal. This is more like the "I have $1000 and want a fancy ass kitchen" viable kitchen.

</comment><comment><USER54> Mark Bittman [1] has a very good article about this. I followed it, and have rarely been disappointed [I didn't buy a few things, such as the mandolin]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09mini.html?pagewan...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/dining/09mini.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

1: [http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/diningandwine/columns...](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/diningandwine/columns/the_minimalist/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER55> I don't know if HN is the proper place to exchange recipes but here's the most simple sauce for asparagus (or many other dishes).

What you need (for 4): one egg, some oil, salt, dijon.

With the yolk, oil, salt and dijon, make regular mayo. Make it strong (don't save on oil). You need to mix everything before adding oil, as salt doesn't dissolve in oil.

Whip stiff the egg whites.

Then mix the two (mayo and stiff whites) slowly. _Use a spoon_ for this.

This produces a sauce that is delicious and extremely easy/fast to make.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'd highly recommend adding kitchen shears and butcher twine to this list. Both items have a ton of uses and I've found them to be indispensable to have around.

</comment><comment><USER57> The Minimum Viable Kitchen is a microwave and a spork.

<comment><USER19> A campfire and a sharp stick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'll add side towels to the list. They're great for picking up hot things (but not if they are wet!), drying herbs, keeping the bottoms of bowls from sliding around, covering dough while it proofs, cleaning up miscellaneous spills, and tidying up the edges of plates. I like to keep a tall stack of clean ones on the counter, and throw them into a dedicated kitchen hamper as needed.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think the author needs to try to cook a great meal with a rice cooker before he labels everything that comes out of one as painful.

When it comes to minimal a rice cooker is what I would want. You can steam, pan fry, boil and slow cook. Short of baking and dehydrating(which I'm sure you could figure out) its got you covered.

Saying you 3 knives is minimum seems to be missing the point.

</comment><comment><USER60> I don't think I could live without a toaster, definitely makes lunch or breakfast 10x better.

Also, I really like my slow cooker, it also works great for either hacker or hustler with a lot on their mind because you just cut meat & veggies, throw it in the pot with some seasoning, set it and get on with your life. Nothing like a good beef stew..

</comment><comment><USER61> Nothing minimal about that list. "Mininum" kitchen can probably be had for under $100.

Never put the words "Thomas Keller" near "minimum."

I have some allclad D5, it's great. If you're looking for nonstick, pick up Tfal's pro nonstick line on amazon - saute pan runs around $30 and is Cook's Illustrated favorite pick.

</comment><comment><USER62> My favorite frypan, [http://www.vollrathco.com/catalog_product.jsp?id=5099&ci...](http://www.vollrathco.com/catalog_product.jsp?id=5099&cid=193) Picked up from a resturant supply store for $75 dollars. Worth every penny.

</comment><comment><USER63> I've either purchased or influenced the purchase of at least ten copies of Ad Hoc. It has a lot of tips throughout and the recipes are simple enough for most cooks while showy enough for dinner parties.

Oh, and a good set of tongs are my must have in the kitchen.

</comment><comment><USER64> Good list. We've got a lot more stuff in our kitchen but that list is what we use all the time and wouldn't want to live without. I do have a couple non- sticks for omeletts and stuff like that and love them dearly but treat them very gingerly.

</comment><comment><USER65> Congratulations for an excellently written article. I found myself engrossed by the descriptions, and it has the appropiate amount of humor too.

Sadly I don't think I can find most of the items in my home country (maybe there's an opportunity there :) ).

</comment><comment><USER66> in regards to owning multiple plastic cutting boards, i was at the MOMA store the other day and thought their Index Advance Chopping Boards were neat:

[http://www.momastore.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDi...](http://www.momastore.org/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay_Index- Advance-Chopping-Boards_10451_10001_112198_-1_26669_26670)

</comment><comment><USER67> This is a kitchen that can bake tons of stuff from scratch.

Without that (expensive) component, you can greatly pare down this list to about ~400ish

</comment><comment><USER55> Great article, but an "MVK" is really one iron wok, a heat source, and a knife. Everything else is useful but not "minimal".

</comment><comment><USER68> I second the professional chef. McGee's On Food and Cooking is another essential. It's a reference book, but worth it.

</comment><comment><USER69> My personal MVK cost a lot less than $970...</comment>


Birds Can See Earth's Magnetic Fields, and Now We Know How That's Possible - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/birds-see-magnetic-fields-cryptochrome-cry4-photoreceptor-2018 <comment><USER2> For historical purposes, the last conversation on this fascinating article =

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16823201](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16823201)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _There 's also been evidence in recent years that, in birds, the > cryptochromes in their eyes are responsible for their ability to orient > themselves by detecting magnetic fields, a sense called magnetoreception._

How soon until someone in the body-mod community tries implanting these into their own eyeballs?

<comment><USER4> With words like 'cryptochromes' and 'magnetoreception', I'm sure it's going to have some misunderstood appeal.

<comment><USER5> Let's call it wifi-o-vision. Much more useful to see using the surrounding microwaves. (via backscatter)

Compared to that, magnetic field sensing requires really strong fields.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would love to see a simulation of what this type of vision looks like. I think that would be very interesting.

<comment><USER7> Like describing "blue" to a blind person I'd imagine.

<comment><USER8> No imagination required, there is such a visualisation in the article.</comment></comment></comment>


tinypy - A 64k implementation of a subset of Python, bootstrapped - <AUTHOR> http://www.philhassey.com/blog/2008/01/31/tinypy-64k-bootstrapped/

<comment><USER2> Tried it this morning. Has a problem compiling [0] but looks interesting.

      fb@fahbah:~/ratpile/download/python/tinypy/tinypy$ cat tmp.txt
      File "tmp1.tpc", line 5, in ?
        C("OK").print()
      File "tmp1.tpc", line 4, in C_print
          def print(self): print(self.data)

      Exception:
      tp_get: KeyError: data

[0] [http://www.philhassey.com/blog/2008/01/31/tinypy-64k-bootstr...](http://www.philhassey.com/blog/2008/01/31/tinypy-64k-bootstrapped/#comment-844)</comment>


Mixing Open Source & Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevestreeting.com/2008/08/28/mixing-open-source-business-my-take/

<comment><AUTHOR> The author of the article is the creator of the great Ogre 3d engine. His advice is worth reading, as he's very experienced both in creating successful open software and in doing contract work related to it (he explains the results in the article).</comment>


How I wrote this blog post - <AUTHOR> http://blog.michaelschmatz.com/2016/03/31/how-i-wrote-this-blog-post/ <comment><USER2> What value do you derive from this setup? There are hundreds of blog publishing solutions that automate all but the writing part of that workflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main reason that I like this setup over other solutions is that it's very similar to the way I write code; having one workflow makes things a bit easier!

Is there a particular workflow that you use?</comment></comment>


The binge watching crackdown begins - <AUTHOR> https://sifted.eu/articles/streaming-pollution/ <comment><USER2> Is this satire? I am not familiar with the site.

<comment><USER3> It is and it is not.

The secretary of state did say that. And meant it.

But so far, it feels like he is a bit alone, with a few old industrial/regulatory interests behind him, but it's not clear whether it will plainly fall flat and fail, or if it will take momentum.

The same thing happened with the StopCovid French app. The same thing happened also with the "sovereign cloud" platform in France. The same thing happened too with the Hadopi thing (sort of a monitoring/controlling body to prevent peer-2-peer media piracy). Somehow the same thing happened with a recent shutdown of a nuclear power plant in the objective of lowering CO2 production.

"The same thing" = absurd, poorly thought, poorly motivated and poorly executed ideas.

<comment><USER4> > the Hadopi thing (sort of a monitoring/controlling body to prevent > peer-2-peer media piracy)

> recent shutdown of a nuclear power plant in the objective of lowering CO2 > production.

Whew... I thought the USA was the only place run by a clueless out of touch political class with no grasp of reality.

Ours is more entertainingly crazy though. You can't beat our match-up of President Scroob vs. Prince Valium (Spaceballs references).</comment></comment></comment>


Motorola Claims Executive Now With Apple Took Secrets  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=addkX1GCw6zw <comment><USER2> This isn't some case of corporate espionage or something. The "secrets" this guy is accused of taking is basically just run of mill information that he would need to be privy to in order to do his job- pricing, margins, planning, etc.

The meat of this is that he signed an agreement not to work for a competitor for at least 2 years. This agreement probably isn't unlike the types of agreements many corporate employees are required to sign.

Now Apple is doing well in the phone market and Motorola is slipping. I guess I don't blame them for suing. I'm sure this will be settled, but it would be interesting to see it play out in court.</comment>


Ask HN: Privacy wise, worse to have unencrypted notes on Apple Notes / Evernote? - <AUTHOR> I absolutely need a cloud service to store my notes, and Apple notes or Evernote are the best apps that provide cloud storage and offline editing, without any hosting work on my part, and importantly backup concerns.
I don't want to encrypt all my notes, because I'd like to run some programmatic analyses on them by myself, eventually: collecting similar themes, creating word clouds, etc.
From one side, it looks like Apple Notes is a hands-down winner, because they have their own data centers, and have been more public about their hard privacy stance. Evernote uses Google cloud infra, have very few (~10) employees (more easy access to any data they want?).
However, I'm only wary about storing everything on Apple - my photos are already up there in iCloud - my notes as well would mean even more of my personality would be available for analysis by Apple if they choose to - and open to be hacked/handed over.
Is there a choice at all here? I don't like OneNote because the cloud sync is over OneDrive. The best option appears to be Apple Notes + locking every note - and I'll lose the ability to pull them all out with an AppleScript.
Minor inconvenience over all, I can find some other way out of that, even if it means manual copy-pasting hundreds of notes when I want to analyse. <comment><USER2> Try Zoho Notebook. You can lock a notebook which would not encrypt your notes but locks the visibility of your notes. And all your notes sync across your devices. Visit [https://zoho.com/notebook](https://zoho.com/notebook) for more details.</comment>


"I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven's sake" - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2013/10/08/10454920.aspx <comment><USER2> I had a manager that would repeatedly use this type of remark. We had this particular application that on one could touch without breaking something. It was always a mess. He would often remark "I wrote the whole thing over a weekend, why can't you guys make a tiny little change without breaking it?" One day I finally got fed up with him and replied "Because it's the quality of work you'd expect from an entire application written over a weekend."

<comment><USER3> I once worked with a founder who would always pull that kind of garbage: "I wrote [simple software with no dependencies or integration requirements] in [N] days! Why is it taking you guys [M] months to write [complex software relying on several 1st and 3rd party libraries, a component that needs to work within a large, old legacy system]?

Good on the develop manager!

<comment><USER4> There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating system?"

"An operating system," replied the programmer.

The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief.

"Surely an accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating system," he said.

"Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package, the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas: how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to tax laws.

By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outward appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system is easier to design."

The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. "That is all good and well," he said, "but which is easier to debug?"

The programmer made no reply.

— _The Tao of Programming_ , Geoffrey James

<comment><USER5> I believe the developers working on Windows Vista, Copland, Taligent and GNU/Hurd would like to have a word with Mr. James.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the real lesson here is that every time you add a feature, you are adding development overhead to every other feature, leading to exponential development time. I'm sure if segment tuning was one of the first thing to go into windows, it would have been much simpler to implement. However, at later stages in the development you have to account for how different, already- written applications are loading their memory, and thus the feature needs handle far more edge cases than it would have if this was an earlier- implemented feature. I'm not saying the overall time to develop segment-tuning would be shorter, in the long run had it been developed first, but the perception of development-time for this feature would be shorter (since any segment tuning edge cases that you ran into while writing an application would be considered part of the app's development time, not segment-tuning's development time).

I'm sure that if Mr. Gates had implemented FAT at a later date, he would have needed a _much_ longer plane ride.

<comment><USER7> I don't think segment tuning is the kind of "feature" your lesson needs as an example. Segment tuning is just a link-time optimization phase. The people doing manual segment tuning were just producing an ordered list of the already-written functions, to be used as input for the linker. These days, it would be implemented as a completely automated process using profile-guided optimization. It's not something that you can do early in the project and get it over with, because any time you do anything to change the call graph of your code base or the size of a compiled function, you need to re-tune.

<comment><USER6> Ah, I didn't realize this was done as a manual process back then. I assumed the engineers were working on an automated system to do the segment tuning for them, and that system was the new "feature" that Mr. Gates thought the engineers were wasting too much time on. Feel free to re-read my above comment with "segment tuning" replaced by "some other feature." Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gates is one of those rare people who is at a time a good developer, good manager and a cunning businessman. I started to appreciate him after watching _Triumph of the Nerds_ documentary series. I literally loled for 5 minutes after watching Gates in an event parodying IBM which was organised by Jobs [http://youtu.be/riyAe4BKAng?t=20m1s](http://youtu.be/riyAe4BKAng?t=20m1s).

<comment><USER9> Wow, Larry Ellison predicts mobile web at 47:00.

<comment><USER10> More Chromebook than Mobile Web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From 12BitSlab in article's comments

> I don't mind if billg gets a little arrogant at times. One merely has to > look at how he wrote the ROM code for the Altair to realize his abilities.

> Also, ALL of the concepts embodied in modern tablets and smartphones were > "invented" by billg when he wrote the code for the Tandy 100. Things like > "instant on", data stored in non-volitile memory, small productivity apps, > continue from the same point after power down, etc. Persoannly, I put billg > in the Top 5 of all-time CS people who contributed to computing.

This is an interesting claim, I was always under the impression that while Gates could code, he wasn't at all a CS giant.

<comment><USER12> When I was an undergrad (a year ahead of Gates, 72-76), Harvard had only "intro to programming" undergrad courses, so those of us CS (well, applied math) majors who arrived at college already competent at programming pretty much just took all grad CS courses for 4 years. The faculty were enlightened enough not to care that we weren't grad students.

Gates was certainly one of the brighter undergrads in those courses. I don't know if that makes him a "CS giant," but he was no slouch.

<comment><USER11> Awesome story, thanks.

While you guys were coding away at Harvard, I was not yet able to properly focus my mind, and so took to running around the streets of Cambridge(port) in diapers instead ;-)

p.s. from the above one can assume I was either born in '72 or was taking far too much acid for my own good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm old enough to know he didn't carry a computer on the plane....

<comment><USER14> But too young to know writing code and speccing data structures on paper (and/or napkins...) was quite common before airplane-friendly computers were available? (And for a long time after, really; ubiquitous ownership of laptops is a quite recent thing).

<comment><USER15> From this Woz quote it was pretty common:

"I wrote all my code on paper in hexadecimal. I couldn't afford an assembler to translate my programs into hexadecimal bytes, I did it myself. Even my BASIC interpreter is all hand written. I'd type 4K into the Apple I and ][ in about an hour. I, and many others too I think, could sit down and start typing hexadecimal in for a SMALL program to solve something that occured or something that somebody else wanted. I'd do this all the time for demos. I certainly don't remember which hexadecimal codes are which 6502 instructions any longer, but it was a part of life back then."

<comment><USER16> When I started my programming career, my first boss did not know how to use a text editor. He could perform a randomizing routine in his head but he trembled at using a text editor -- he still used punched cards and/or a mainframe utility that emulated a punch card. And lots of programmers coded first on columnar grid paper (shades of green and white, demarcations at 8, 12, 16 to help you indent properly.

<comment><USER17> My community college still had us writing C on huge tablets of that IBM grid paper in the late 90s. I can't imagine writing huge amounts of production- worthy code that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So the FAT story may be an exaggeration, but does Brandon Eich's Javascript- in-10-days ([http://www.quora.com/JavaScript/In-which-10-days-of-May- did-...](http://www.quora.com/JavaScript/In-which-10-days-of-May-did-Brendan- Eich-write-JavaScript-Mocha-in-1995)) still count as a "STFU-I'm-the-boss" feat?

<comment><USER19> So _that_ explains it...

;)

<comment><USER20> How do we explain C++?

<comment><USER21> Compatibility with C and its toolchain.

<comment><USER20> I think that's a weak response. obj-c was just as compatible and a far less horrible language design.

<comment><USER21> Actually I don't have any praise for Objective-C's design.

And it also suffers from the same issues that pollute C++'s design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only one who didn't interpret the quote as him showing off? If I used that line, it would be a way of telling them that the problem of segment tuning is an artificial limitation imposed by a format that hasn't gotten enough attention. "I wrote FAT on an airplane" would be my way of saying, "don't come up with better ways to work around my half-assed implementation. spend time improving the implementation so segment tuning isn't even something you have to worry about."

<comment><USER23> FAT and segment loading have nothing to do with each other. Gates was just bragging about having written something complex in a short period of time.

<comment><USER24> Still, he may have been pushing his team to do better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When he says "He wrote FAT on an airplane" he means with pencil and paper since FAT is so old that there were no laptops to do that on. Which maybe he figured out all of the specs, but he didn't put code down and debug it. Of course in those days writing it on paper was quite common before people typed it into the computer. And that is quite impressive in and of itself. Most of the time people treated that activity as if they were coding so they were very precise. Now a days we're fast, but we aren't as precise.

<comment><USER26> You can write code on paper and debug it in your head, running a simulator of the target environment in your brain. There is no "as if"; this was actually coding.

Coding is something you do in your brain, not in an editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Bill Gates complains that people aren't doing real programming and people berate him to shut him up. Steve Jobs throws the first iPod into a fish tank and he's revered as a God.

I guess it's no wonder why the mainstream of Apple and Microsoft is what it is.

</comment><comment><USER28> Was it one of those planes that flies for six months?

<comment><USER14> The initial 8-bit version of FAT (which I personally do not know the history of, but Wikipedia suggests Gates is probably taking more credit for than deserved) and its rough successor, FAT12, are very simple structures. Weird products of their time and place, but simple nonetheless.

Coming up with the blueprint for such on a flight of at few hours seems quite reasonable for someone with the requisite knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If he'd kept one foot in the codebase - he might not have made so much money - but his software legacy might have turned out differently.

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure that Microsoft's is a bad legacy. They did a whole hell of a lot to put programming and office tools in the hands of normal people.

<comment><USER31> I agree. Regardless of what they've done, they largely accomplished their vision. Their vision was to put a PC in every home. They started with such a lofty goal and delivered. The first thing I ever learned on a pc was typing a: <return> to load a floppy on MS DOS.

It seems this is largely their problem today - they no longer have a lofty goal to focus their energy on. Most companies have one. Google - organize the world's information etc. etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Tony Stark was able to build [a miniaturized arc reactor] in a CAVE! With a box of scraps!"

<comment><USER33> I'm sorry, sir. I'm not Tony Stark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> To be honest I can't afford to commute and do nothing, I have to plan new features for my products, redesign existing ones, or at least read a tech book/article, otherwise I feel really frustrated because I dislike to stay still.

The best ideas I have ever had happened during my commute, so I feel familiar with the "I wrote FAT on an airplane" statement.

<comment><USER35> This is why I'm envious of cities with real transit. Driving sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So _that 's_ why everyone uses NTFS...

<comment><USER37> EXT4 fs and other fs , NTFS is a little pony if you go to servers world

<comment><USER38> NTFS is way more sophisticated than ext2/3/4\. ZFS is probably got it beat, but it's actually a pretty great filesystem. Don't confuse 'windows' with 'NTFS'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Isn't this basically Bill Gates exemplifying the "Rockstar Programmer" persona?

"I did X in Y time so why don't you follow my lead" may have been a motivational tactic at the time, but it did backfire. I'm forced to wonder if this is how the motif began.

</comment><comment><USER40> About "optimization", Gates likely had a point. That problem of assigning code blocks (subroutines/functions) to memory segments does suggest a significant role for optimization.

What is optimization? For a very sparse description, for the set R of real numbers, positive integers m and n, functions f: R^n --> R and g: R^n --> R^m, find x in R^n to solve

minimize f(x)

subject to

g(x) >= 0

So, set up a mathematical description of the problem based mostly just on the 'cost' function f, that is, what want to minimize, and 'constraints' g that keep the solution 'feasible', that is, realistic for the real problem. Then look for a solution x. Yes, easily enough such problems can be in NP-complete and still difficult otherwise.

Likely what Gates wanted was function f to be the execution time and function g to force honoring the 64KB limit per segment, etc.

Then a big question would be, assuming what software to have its segments assigned?

So, for an answer, just take some Windows and/or Office code and get the total execution time on a _typical_ workload.

Might also want to be sure that on any of several workloads, the optimal solution was no worse than some factor p in R of the best solution just for that workload. Then keep lowering p until the f(x) starts to rise significantly and come up with a curve of f(x) as a function of p. Present the curve to Gates and have him pick a point.

Gee, should we rule out having the same subroutine/function in more than one segment? Hmm ....

Just where Gates learned about optimization would be a question, but he had a point.

</comment><comment><USER41> You can read it a couple of ways, you can take it as Gates showing off that he did something hard quickly, which is certainly valid, or you can take it as Gates saying 'stop fiddling whilst Rome burns and get it done'. You can hammer out complex ideas quickly and lose your life twiddling the details, or just do it and move on.

Or more likely he was being a bit of a jerk.

</comment><comment><USER42> Am i not getting something i thought that fat was created by Marc Macdonald? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Original_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Original_8-bit_FAT)

</comment><comment><USER43> It took me a while to realize that it didn't mean writing code that ran aboard an airplane, but code that was written while on an airplane. Somehow the latter didn't even cross my mind as something that could be considered impressive.

</comment><comment><USER44> And they got a patent for it? :D

<comment><USER45> IANAL and I haven't read up on everything, but I thought it was just the long filename support that was patented. My understanding is that if you just support 8.3 names it's unencumbered.

Edit with further detail: The thing that's unique about LFN are the rename and delete behaviors. Lots of filesystems support more than 8.3 or multiple names for files (hardlinks) but I don't think any of them have alternate names for files that "stick" when you move them into another dir, or that behave somewhat cleanly when a non-LFN-aware OS does so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> So he got out a notepad and pen, then wrote the word "FAT"... whilst on a plane. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER47> Skip to the last 2 paragraphs of this article. The rest is filler.</comment>


How Not to Fight Colds - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/opinion/05ackerman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion <comment><USER2> The assumption is made that since the immune system's reaction to a cold is inflammation and other cold symptoms, you are therefore experiencing the symptoms of a cold because of your strong immune system.

If your immune system was sufficiently strong, you would never start experiencing the symptoms of the cold because your body would destroy the invading virus during its incubation period -- in other words before the virus duplicated enough to warrant a stronger and more full immune response.

Also, the body's immune response, like all other responses in the body, is performing a constant balancing act. When your body is in balance (homeostasis) the right amount of inflammation occurs to destroy viruses and bacteria, but not so much that you're out of commission. If your body is consistently getting sick and producing high amounts of inflammation (runny nose, itchy eyes, sore throat, etc.), two things are happening:

1\. Your initial immune response isn't kicking in fast enough to destroy viruses while they are in their incubation period

2\. Your body is out of balance and your immune system's cells aren't able to shut down inflammation when necessary.

Recent research suggests that vitamin D plays a critical role in both "awakening" the immune system's T-cells, or turning them on, and moderating inflammation , or sending the immune system into "sleep" mode when it's done fighting off invaders. [1] [2]

Dr. Carsten Geisler, head of the Department of International Health, Immunology, & Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen said, "When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signaling device of 'antenna' known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D," If the level of vitamin D is inadequate, "they won't even begin to mobilize."

Based on this (and other interesting studies) I'd say that the best way to prevent the common cold is to make sure you have enough vitamin D in your body. What to do when you've already got the cold... probably not much you _can_ do except take some zinc lozenges, pound the vitamin C, and try to get rest.

[1] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=another-r...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=another- reason-vitamin-d-is-importa-2010-03-07) [2] [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090408140208.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090408140208.htm)

<comment><USER3> The zinc is definitely a very good idea, with some caveats. Vitamin C probably helps in the long term, especially for athletes, but I don't think it's such a good idea once you have a cold. Definitely don't take any during or soon after a zinc lozenge.

Zinc supplementation for the purpose of fighting a cold is a bit tricky. According to the largest review of zinc cold studies I know of, only ionic zinc (as opposed to bound zinc) has a positive effect. Total zinc supplementation has no correlation with either duration or severity of cold symptoms. In fact, the majority of the brands of candy-like zinc lozenges on the US market likely have no effect at all.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15496046>

Summary: take zinc gluconate (ZG), make sure it's a slow lozenge and avoid vitamin C or anything else that could interfere with the effects of the zinc lozenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm reminded of something I once saw written (tweeted?) by the astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson (although I doubt he is the originator): "Any good remedy will cure the common cold in about a week. But left to itself, it will linger for seven days."

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know about the other remedies, but there is some good evidence in favor of zinc combating the common cold:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15496046?dopt=Abstract>

Note, however, that zinc is only effective if taken at the onset of the very first symptoms. Personally, I've been using it during the last five years, and it seems effective so far.

<comment><USER6> The article failed to offer a model of what a cold is, how it starts, spreads, etc. You're right about Zinc.

In general the article's point was about a one sentence insight, spread into a long fluff piece with the hook of a counter-intuitive zinger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From my personal experience I'd say for dry cough <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linctus> syrup is good and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaifenesin> syrup for progressive cough.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Boosting your immune system could only make your cold symptoms worse._

This isn't at all surprising. Many of these symptoms are part of the body's efforts at fighting the cold. As long as these symptoms increase the body's effectiveness at fighting the virus, I'd view them as a good thing.

<comment><USER9> All that snot and sneezing helps to spread the virus around too. Perhaps some of the most common colds are those that invoke a strong immune response.

<comment><USER8> Good point. There are also downsides. Still, in general, I prefer to let my body fight illness as best it knows how, unless it is obviously mis- functioning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thus science proves it.

Whisky is the cure for the common cold! ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've started flagging any articles behind a paywall because I assume that it's the correct course of action. Please tell me if this is wrong.

<comment><USER9> NY Times seems to hit you with a pay wall after you have read a few articals. Delete your nytimes cookies and hit the link again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't leave a comment about the story, but I can leave a comment about the registration wall preventing me from reading the story.

<comment><USER13> Read here: [http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/opinion/05ackerman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion)</comment></comment>


On nodevember - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/on-nodevember-f28a42c4b62e#.4q4kzk38e <comment><USER2> > That said, he's still rude and a jerk.

So you insult people publicly, without a single fact to back up anything and you want people to respect your opinion? you're not going win the argument that way, not that you care obviously, but you're basically complaining about CrockFord being unprofessional, while behaving in a non professional fashion yourself. I'm sorry, but it's hard to give you the benefit of the doubt now.

This story hurts everybody, the node community first and foremost. Keep spitting on the people who allowed Javascript to be what it is today. Unbelievable.

archived : [https://archive.is/ae5wg](https://archive.is/ae5wg)

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh boo-hoo. Everyone has coworkers, colleagues, and/or acquaintances who are jerks. You deal with them because you have to. If you're going to be a professional and part of a professional community, act like it. You don't throw your weight around like you're in a grade school popularity contest.

<comment><USER4> Or as many adults do, you may choose to talk it out. It to me seems from the outside that DC is the kind of person who would gladly talk it out with someone else. It's funny to see grown adults who are, for all purposes are pinnacle members of the development community demonstrating they are inept at dealing with social situations.

I don't think I've ever met anyone in my life who, once confronted about the thing they did that annoyed me, in a civil way, kept doing it around me. If they wanted to continue the behavior they'd just do it with other people. I think from my life experiences that people a very receptive to constructive criticism while completely non receptive to "You're a horrible person" statements.

It's not productive and doing things in that manor makes it impossible for either side to see where everyone is coming from.

<comment><USER5> > I don't think I've ever met anyone in my life who, once confronted about the > thing they did that annoyed me, in a civil way, kept doing it around me.

Which is why these tactics are how they are: You don't say anything until you collected or fabricated enough grievances to burn all bridges. It's precisely not about fairness (which would among other things imply single instead of double standards) or working anything out, that's the one thing that has to be avoided.

<comment><USER4> > grievances to burn all bridges

You shouldn't be waiting that long. For a civil conversation to be had you need to bring it up as soon as it starts happening.

Lets say for example that I am really really bad at remembering names. I am working with a coworker who only wants to be called by their full last name, not an abbreviation. Not knowing this, I start calling them by their abbreviation and it annoys them significantly. They then confront me about this and I explain why I didn't call them by their full name. I agree to try harder and they agree to work on correcting me when I make the mistake. It's a win win. We've crushed and bad feelings between us, resolved the problem with the best possible outcome, and now I get to correctly refer to my coworker.

This only worked since they contacted me as soon as they realized my mistake and gave me a chance to explain myself.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, but what you're describing is someone acting in good faith, what I was describing is someone acting in bad faith and/or having a few marbles missing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> She's presenting at this conference next month:

[http://frontporch.io/kassandra-perch/](http://frontporch.io/kassandra-perch/)

I wonder how she would like it if hundreds of people contacted them demanding that they dis-invite her over her vicious hateful vendetta against Crockford, lest they launch a campaign of boycotts and complaints against their corporate sponsors.

People who live in glass houses, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> Organizations will only stop caving to these vicious, hateful people when it becomes more _costly_ to cave to them than to ignore them.

</comment><comment><USER7> toxic statement from a toxic person</comment>


It Turns Out Cancer Can Be Killed After All - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jeffwitzeman/so-it-turns-out-cancer-can-be-killed-after-all-32764ac8d6db <comment><USER2> The article author clearly doesn't understand enough physiology (or English grammar, usage, and spelling, for that matter) to be making any scientific conclusions.

For example, his theory that eating only fruits and vegetables starves the cancer of sugar is ludicrous. Dietary glucose and sucrose (half glucose, half fructose) occur naturally _only_ in fruits and vegetables; many fruits are, in fact, quite high in sugar. (The way to starve one's system of sugar is with a _ketogenic_ diet.)

Similarly, his claim that all cancer cells die at a temperature at which all healthy cells are safe (or at oxygenation levels that are safe for all healthy cells) is bogus. Hyperthermia treatments are directed _at the tumor_ and at higher temperatures than he states. BTW, Lance Armstrong's hyperthermia therapy was to treat his _testicular cancer_ , not win the Tour de France.

etc. etc.

That said, I'm all for exploring treatments outside the current Western burn/cut/irradiate paradigm... but beware of utter quackery. US medicine is largely constrained by what is FDA-approved (for better or worse), a constraint overseas providers are free of.

I'll bet the Tijuana clinics mentioned were also big laetrile pushers in the past... or even _now_.

His paranoia about a primary profit motive to chemo and surgery seems ludicrous -- if a patient can be cured with far cheaper chemicals and methods, why wouldn't the Western doctors use _those_ and charge the patient the same higher rates and make _more_ money?

*Technical note: some organs and tissues NEED glucose; even with no dietary carbohydrate, the body manufactures glucose out of proteins as needed via gluconeogenesis... so the body is never completely sugar-free.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone with relevant knowledge in this field comment on this? Are the treatments described in the article effective?

The way it is described sounds too good to be true.</comment>